Hey guys great to see so much interest in my dads old car!

I'm Petey son of Bill Datlen. Dad brought the car off our very close family friend Rita Tutel in 1990 along with a 1922 Cadillac also owned by the Turtels. My father was the first person to race the car again since the car was put in storage in the early 70s after the two young lads were tragically killed.

The car was indeed single speed with only an accelerator and a brake pedal which reportedly did very very little. Dads favourite scary memory was lapping cars down the front straight of Ruapuna while hard on the brakes whilst the other cars were still changing up gears! The car was indeed a rocket but an incredibly scary car to drive. Allegedly you had to make sure you were doing atleast 100mph and pointing the car very straight before putting your foot all the way down on the accelerator if you wanted to avoid lighting the huge rear tyres up! As you can imagine the car weighed very very little yet had an immensely huge amount of torque from the 7.7 litre flat 6 engine! The car had no exhausts with the straight pipes dumping directly onto the ground making it a very loud car indeed (which a couple neighbors a few streets over would always remind us) This was a problem as with the modern day noise restraints the car could not be run at a couple of tracks due to neighbors of race car tracks suddenly realizing that race cars were loud AFTER they had brought there property....however as loud as the car was it was just an amazingly beautiful sound as im sure everyone can appreciate!!

The car is currently owned by Bill Cowley who purchased it off my father. The car was put up for sale in Fazzaz in Christchurch but the car DID NOT get killed in the earthquake thank god! It is currently undergoing a restoration and for the sake of making it legal to race again it is somehow (lord knows how) getting a reverse gear put in! This car will however resurface some time soon and i am sure we will see it back on the track in all its glory in no time!